


Instruments of an Art

by keep_calm_and_ks



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Holmes Is A Romantic Dammit, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 06:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9643769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keep_calm_and_ks/pseuds/keep_calm_and_ks
Summary: It is Nature’s practice to induce the attraction of two unlike bodies, and I am nothing if not a strict follower of the laws of Nature.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ariani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariani/gifts).



> Title is from The Picture of Dorian Gray: "Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art." If you know me at all, this fact will not surprise you.
> 
> Beta-read by the lovely [MelyannaTheMaia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelyannaTheMaia/pseuds/MelyannaTheMaia). Contact her at melyannathemaia.tumblr.com for betaing services!

To realise that one is in love with John Watson is not unlike experiencing the breathless pause after the first, _vivace_ movement of Tchaikovsky’s fourth concerto. It is the end of something lovely, something grand, to be sure—but it is dangerous, too, because it marks an inevitable beginning: a headlong rush into a quiet and inescapable _adagio_.

There is little refuge for a man such as myself in what is deemed “polite society,” and it is therefore fortunate that I have never sought out either politeness or the constraining embrace of society at large. Since boyhood, I have preferred my own company. Few opportunities for companionship present themselves when a youth finds more pleasure in the careful dissection of a garden snake than in stone-skipping or hoops; fewer still when that youth makes it clear that the fair sex holds no appeal for him, and fails to understand the ancient taboo which he has violated.

I have never been a member of polite society. Hence, guided by geometry’s principle of transition, I felt sure that polite society would never desire me as a member.

Until such time as I met John Watson.

My gifts allowed me to read his military career in his leg and his skin, his surgical prowess in his hands, and a dozen other things besides. Morality. Loyalty. An irrepressible curiosity. I believed, as is my weakness, that a moment’s glance had afforded me insight into the man entire, yet there was so much I had not seen.

John Watson. An upright man, a handsome man, a bachelor by choice. A very private man, despite his aura of conviviality. Through and through, every inch the sort I would have placed into the file labelled “Society: Polite” in the drawer my mind employs for such purposes. He fit the bill completely—save his damnable persistence in his association with me.

I fell in love with him, obviously. It is Nature’s practice to induce the attraction of two unlike bodies, and I am nothing if not a strict follower of the laws of Nature. With his virtues, and I the way I am, my inherent sin was bound to be compounded with another: the corruption of a model Englishman.

Once I had realized, he haunted me. The notes of his fine baritone over breakfast. The pleasing lines of his profile while he arranged his notes by the fire. By night, I would slip my tongue over my teeth imagining what it would be like to kiss him… and by day, I cursed him for the distraction of those blue eyes glinting at me as I presented the conclusion of a case.

But I have said that there was something that I failed, upon our first meeting, to remark about my companion, and it is this: John Watson, former captain in the service of Her Majesty and lover of women both native and remote, takes a positively _wicked_ delight in subverting the laws of God and men.

Thus my addled brain is able to provide an explanation for John Watson’s actions at present, as he stands from his chair and presses my hand to his lips and whispers “Oh, Holmes, had you no idea?” Thus I can understand the flick of mischief in his eye as he rises on his toes to— _oh, God_ —to kiss me, and I can feel the swelling strains of Tchaikovsky’s fourth concerto reverberating in my mind, in my heart, in the spaces between my fingers. Thus, at last, I come to know John Watson.

My Watson.

My John.


End file.
